


and time it travels far too fast

by mnabokov



Series: tel aviv [2]
Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Dom/sub Undertones, M/M, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-18 12:40:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13100325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnabokov/pseuds/mnabokov
Summary: They sit, they eat. To the left, the Yarkon River purls lowly. To the right, tall grass sways gently. It feels underwhelming. Charles reaches for the persimmon and cheese. Erik’s hand feels empty; his fingers curl into a fist.





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Français available: [Tout est blanc, tout givré. Survivant tout flingué. C'est l'hiver, en été.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15405351) by [Judith H (Elizabeth_Mary_Holmes)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elizabeth_Mary_Holmes/pseuds/Judith%20H)



> Title from "Love Love" by Take That.

He isn’t sure what he’s looking for.

For all the planning that he had done, he had never thought about after.

After.

Before. After. As though his life were cut into two perfect halves. Before. After.

After.

After, he returns home. After, he returns to the Holy Land.

Erik goes to Jerusalem.

He has never been afforded the luxury of travel in the past; it is his first time in this place, but somehow it doesn’t feel like that is the case.

He thinks that Israel is where he began, where they all began, where they first made a home long long ago, where there are writings carved into rock in caves of the first laws they’ve ever written, the first stories from God and from people. He thinks Jerusalem is the heart of it.

In the streets, in the city, he walks through the dirt roads in the market places. He thinks that these are the same dirt roads, the same paved streets, the same city that his people lived in, walked on, so many years ago.

On the way over, in the plane, Erik wonders. Can you know where you are from, if you’ve never been there? If you stand there, in your home, does it feel right in your bones? A child born and left alone -- if that child met its mother again, would it know? Simply by feeling and touching and tasting?

Erik goes to Jerusalem, to the Old City, the Western Wall, the Temple Mount.

In the old city, he climbs stone steps and runs his hand along ancient walls. His heart beats heavily in his chest. His hands feel unclean no matter how many times he washes them.

He goes to the Western Wall and looks at the limestone rock. He does not touch. He dreams of killing Shaw.

Erik goes to Temple Mount and imagines the people who stood here, killed here, died here: the Byzantines, the Herodians, King Solomon. He feels ashamed. He doesn’t know as much as he should. How could he? He thinks that now is his time to learn.

Erik stands there and it does not feel right in his bones. He tries, but he cannot remember. He tries to think of Amidah and his mother and his father but all he can scrounge up in his memories are images of white bone and pink flesh and red red blood.

Who is he, if not his mother’s son? If not a believer in his religion?

(A murderer.)

He dreams of the weight of his coin in his palm, the touch of metal against flesh, the coppery taste of blood in his mouth.

Erik came to Jerusalem thinking that it is a place that he knows, a place that is a part of him; that he’s forgotten something here but cannot remember for the life of him what it is.

He isn’t sure what he’s looking for --

(Absolution, resolution, an answer he thought he’d get when he killed Shaw)

\-- but whatever it is, it isn’t here.

After he returns home, after he returns to the Holy Land, Erik goes to Tel Aviv.

He meets Charles, and it seems as though his life is divided again. Before the war, and after. Before the Holy Land, and after. Before Charles, and after.

“I killed him,” Erik tells Charles in a sunlit shop, over a breakfast of bread and cheese and grapes and coffee. “I killed him.”

“I know,” the other man says. “Did it bring you peace? Did you feel catharsis? Or is that what you came here for?”

Erik has known Charles for less than 24 hours and he already knows this: Charles wields his mutation like a man who has never had his power or his pride stripped away from him.

(“Oh, my friend,” Charles had said, “I know everything about you.”)

Erik reaches out and sips from his coffee. “Should I not have done it?” Erik says. He reaches out to straighten his fork with a pinky. He wonders how Charles would twist, would cry without power. He decides that thought is dark, even for him, and pushes it away.

“There’s more to you, Erik,” Charles says, mirroring that and picking up a fork, “There’s more than just pain and anger -- there’s good too. I felt it.”

Of course he did.

Erik clenches his fist and in Charles’ hand, the fork tenses then releases, like an exhale.

 

* * *

 

There is something that Erik needs to find -- something he did not find in Jerusalem, something he thinks he might find in Tel Aviv.

He knows there is still a trail, still men left to find and to hunt. Zev, the beer vendor, had been tantalizing close to disclosing the whereabouts of an SS officer before Charles’ interruption.

But there is something, here.

Erik’s hesitation is why he finds himself somewhere in Old Jaffa, tucked into a narrow alleyway, surrounded by cool stone and drooping plants spilling from grooves in the rock. The stone, the sky, the sun is golden ecru. A blue-white flag hangs in the stillness. Because of the nearby market, it smells like pomegranates and ink and leather.

Charles and Erik have their backs to one stone wall, leaning against the rock. It only takes a second for Charles to whisk them away with his mind; Old Jaffa melts away easily.

They’re in the wild, in a mountain range, Erik assumes, somewhere in the Alps or America. Around them, mountain cliffs grow up and up and up. They scrape at an impossibly large sky.

Below, the valley is green and thriving. Charles has chosen to bring them here just as the sun begins to rise. Everything is quiet, cold, fresh, clean, untouched.

They are in each other’s thoughts: Charles thinks that this is the world’s favorite time of day, the quiet moment between day and night, the quiet moment where the sun hangs between sky and horizon, waiting, not wanting to leave; Erik thinks that they both have the tendency to linger.

Charles’ gaze fixes on a flower, a sugarbowl bud, by their feet. He wonders how even the DNA of a cell cannot predict the perfect slope of the petal, like the slope of a lip, or a hipbone. They spend a while there, in the mountains, before returning home that day.

And another time: Erik’s hesitation is why he finds himself wandering the city, talking with Charles. They’re just passing the Great Synagogue on Allenby Street as Charles explains, “In literature, the sublime describes greatness. Vastness. It’s this sudden rush, of shock, of awe.”

“Of awareness?”

“And of realization.”

They wait for a car to shuttle by before crossing the street.

“We know so much about the world,” Charles says. “We know the temperature of the air around us in Kelvin and Centigrade and Fahrenheit, I can find the pH of rainwater and yet we can’t describe the color blue.

“There’s something more, I think, when you’re standing and seeing all of it. That’s what the sublime is to me; it’s this recognition of the world around us.” Charles shakes his head.

They walk down the road, towards the ocean. They walk in silence for awhile.

“Where else?” Erik says when they’ve reached the boardwalk.

“Lots of places,” Charles answers without missing a beat.

Erik gives Charles the chance to lie. “You read my mind?”

Charles quirks his lips in half a smile in response and continues. “The Swiss Alps, the deserts, a thunderstorm from a girl’s window.”

“All places you’ve seen before,” Erik surmises tonelessly. Charles taps his temple in answer.

“It’s a little harder searching for memories rather than reading thoughts, but I haven't had that problem for years.”

Erik blinks.

Charles continues without pause, hands outstretched as Erik watches quietly. Charles’ fingers outline the tips of jagged mountains and his palms mimic rolling valleys. The top button of his shirt is undone. Erik looks away.

It’s effortless to fall into orbit with Charles.

Erik meant to spend only an afternoon, perhaps an evening, with this strange gentleman, this other mutant. Surely Erik could’ve picked up the trail again by finding Zev, but Erik had been distracted.

For someone so opposite of Erik, Charles is, impossibly, simultaneously aggravating and compulsive and magnetic. He is the definition of contradiction and arrogance, and yet --

Charles is so easy to touch, so tactile; he makes it so simple. There is something, something Erik cannot put his finger on.

 

* * *

  

Erik didn’t expect much, when he came to Tel Aviv. But then he met Charles.

There is this:

One of the first nights they are together, Charles and Erik sit on Erik’s balcony. (That is remarkable in and of itself, that Erik has let someone into his home. Erik tries not to think about how Charles could’ve made him.) The metal railing has been transfigured into a leafy vine and their metal seats are significantly more comfortable than they were the day before. The sky is pale and blurry.

Erik purchased a bag of guavas from a street vendor a few hours ago and shares the fruit with Charles. The green skin is slightly bitter but Erik eats the pink, pulpy flesh with relish.

He’s had little time to take pleasures in such things in his life, but tonight, Erik finds himself drawn to the way Charles’ lips pucker around his fruit. Charles’ mouth is red and soft. Erik looks. He does not touch.

But there is also this:

Charles treats Erik like no man has treated Erik before.

Charles gives like he has all the wealth and time in the world: gives Erik back a memory of his mother and their Menorah, the canting rhythm of the Amidah; plays music and chess and reads aloud newspapers and novels, shares memories and models of mountains and oceans and deserts because he knows that Erik will never tire of these things, of words and fine arts and beauty.

And Charles knows about Erik’s past. He knows about the blood, the bleeding, the bone. Yet Charles treats Erik as though Charles believes that Erik was not meant to be alone. Charles touches Erik -- his wrist, his elbow, his shoulder to get Erik’s attention -- without fear or hesitation. It is oddly refreshing.

 

* * *

 

“You misunderstand,” Charles is shaking his head. He has a drink in one hand and a fag in the other. “I do think the world deserves to know about mutants. But not like this. Not -- ”

“Not now,” Erik finishes.  “If not now, then when?”

“They have to see that we are alike, my friend. Man and mutant, side by side.”

“We are not alike. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Humans are adaptable. They’ll come to accept mutants, but only with time. Immediate action leads to turmoil, and conflict. We must integrate, little by little.”

Erik snorts. Smoke curls around them, lazy. “They won’t accept us, like that. You should know, Charles, that integration won’t ever work.”

“It’ll work better than if the world discovers that there’re thousands of mutants out there overnight. Can you imagine the backlash, the fear? People will be afraid, Erik. And they’ll act irrationally.” Charles shakes his head again. “Better that mutation is introduced gradually. One step at a time. Peacefully.”

 

* * *

 

 

Every morning Erik wakes early, before the sun, to head to the ocean. He jogs up and down the boardwalk until his heart thrums in his chest, a force of habit too ingrained in him to be reckoned with.

One particular day, he’s walking through the open market on his way back to his Bauhaus building, having just finished his morning exercise.

The city begins to stir, now. The sun has lifted. The smell of spices fills the air -- jars of za’atar, caraway and baharat.

This is all familiar: the path that Erik takes, winding through the street vendors, back to his flat. He’s turning the corner onto his street when he bumps into a little girl with blue ribbons in her curly hair.

She makes a noise of surprise and looks up up up to meet Erik in the eye. She frowns and he frowns back at her.

“Sorry,” she says a second later, in Hebrew.

“That’s fine,” he replies in kind. He is unsure of what to say to a child so young. “Are you lost?”

Her frown deepens. “No,” she says indignantly. Erik guesses that she is five or six years old. “The car -- Abba needs someone to fix the car.”

“Right,” Erik says, and looks around for her abba, her father.

She tugs his pantleg. “Can you fix a car?”

“Yes,” Erik answers, although not without hesitation.

Which is how Erik finds himself following the young girl, Nona, through the bustling streets of Tel Aviv, into Old Jaffa. His shoes nearly touch her black Mary Janes in his attempt to stay close in the crowded streets.

He learns that she is the daughter of the baker, who works in the corner shop a few blocks over from his flat.

Children, Erik decides, are strange. Nona watches, intrigued, as he fixes the old baker’s car, asking him why the gears look like that, why a car needs oil. He answers each question haltingly.

When the repairs are finished, Erik stands and wipes his grimy hands on his dark pants, ready to return to his apartment, perhaps find Charles. But Nona smiles toothily and brings Erik inside the bakery.

The baker greets and thanks him heartily, and Erik awkwardly accepts a loaf of fresh-baked bread. Nona asks to see him again.

Erik is a creature of habit but finds it quite easy to fit a visit to the baker into his week.  

That Erik finds a place next to Nona, covered in flour and helping the baker, so easily is not a surprise. The soft-sweet smell of fresh bread, the warmth of a stone oven are comforting to Erik in a way he hasn’t known for a while.

However, what does come as a surprise is Charles coming to visit Erik at the bakery several days later.

Erik feels an initial wave of shock when Charles enters the shop, but it quickly fades away as Erik makes his introductions.

They come to the bakery often enough, until one day Nona’s father offers them a basket full of freshly baked bread.

The basket dangles on the crook of Charles’ elbow, and Nona’s little ribbon flutters in the wind as they walk through the street vendors, purchasing food. After, they climb onto Erik’s motorcycle and he drives them out of the city. The wind runs fingers through Erik’s hair.

They sit, they eat. To the left, the Yarkon River purls lowly. To the right, tall grass sways gently. It feels underwhelming. Charles reaches for the persimmon and cheese. Erik’s hand feels empty; his fingers curl into a fist.

 

* * *

 

A dream.

Smoke curling in the air. Cheap cigars, dusty ashtrays. A familiar bar.

A few bills on the table. Door swings open. Outside, streetlamps flicker. Streetlight looks like butter on the wet streets. Stale cold dusk, the pitter patter of rain and footfalls. Behind him, Charles.

Wetly walking. Ducking into an alleyway. Stale cold night.

Charles’ hands slipping into Erik’s coat. Erik pushes Charles against the crumbling brick wall behind them. It’s easy to touch him. Lips, dry. Mouth, wet. The taste of cigars and alcohol and smoke.

A familiar taste.

 

* * *

  

“Better that mutation is introduced gradually. One step at a time. Peacefully.”

Erik puts down his glass. “You want us to hide.”

They’re in a bar, somewhere down the strip, hidden from the rest of the patrons by a thin veil of cigar smoke and drunkenness.

“I don’t -- ”

Erik reaches over and takes Charles’ wallet. He flips open the leather and points at the polaroid photo of a pretty blonde girl. “She’s a mutant.” Charles looks down at the photo of Raven. “You’re a mutant. I’m a mutant. You use your powers openly. So do I. And yet, the only photo you have of your sister is one where she can pass as normal?”

Charles flips the wallet closed. “I’m trying to protect us, Erik. Can you imagine what they’d do? If they didn’t know?”

“I know, Charles.”

“Then why do you insist on forcing every mutant to reveal themselves?”

“I don’t want anyone to have to hide.”

Charles taps his smoke and brushes the ashes away.  “We don’t have to hide, Erik. But we don’t have to use violence, either.”

 

* * *

 

When he was hunting (and there is no other word for what that was), Erik had little time for anything else. When the war still kept him prisoner, Erik had little: no warmth to cherish, no soft things to touch, no other to love.

Today, they’re lounging in a bookshop, somewhere, in Tel Aviv.

They’ve already had breakfast, a little later than usual, walking and talking as they shared a paper bag of a warm kind of bagel. After wandering the open-air market, they found themselves strolling past the flea market and street-side shops. Past galleries boasting oil paintings and women selling baskets, hand-woven blankets, they find the bookstore.

The door is open and an Israeli singer warbles on the vinyl. Sweat sticks Erik’s sleeves to his arms. He doesn’t mind. There are worse things than a little warmth.

Inside, the owner welcomes them. She acknowledges Charles first, as he steps in before Erik. Erik turns away as he enters the shop, heading towards the stacks of magazines in the back. Charles is drawn into conversation.

Pulp novels and empty record sleeves are strewn across the carpet. Erik steps over them.

There’s an old newspaper clipping. Erik skims it, initially uninterested. _The Nature of Love_ , he reads, a study by Harry Harlow.

A few years ago, Dr Harlow raised baby monkeys two different ways: one with cloth mothers, the other with wire mothers. Contact and touch are vital to attachment, learning, emotional well-being, and psychological development, Erik reads.

Lab rats.

The monkey depends on the doll for basic necessity and nourishment, but also comfort and security. In primate infants, there is an instinctive need to cling to another body, soft and warm. Without the cloth mother, monkeys grow disturbed.

Life-long scars, Erik reads. Contact, comfort, familiarity.

The words blur as Erik reads faster. Our monkey, says Harlow, may die for want of love.

“Erik, my friend,” Charles interrupts suddenly. He looks away from the woman standing behind the cash register. “Are you well?”

“Fine,” Erik says.

Charles pays for his book and smiles at the cashier. They leave.

That night, Charles and Erik part ways amicably. The night is still young, but Erik heads back to his apartment.

When he emerges about an hour later, he has two smooth lumps of metal in his pocket. He’s changed out of his white shirt and khakis, into dark clothes.

Erik exits his flat under the heavy blanket of nightfall, which smothers the thin fog and streetlamps’ light. He heads out towards a neighborhood on the south side of Tel Aviv.

It’s quite easy to find Zev again.

The metal slats of his beer cart, left outside his home, which he pushes along the boardwalk to sell, overpriced to tourists; the distinct bronze of his signet ring; the amalgam filling his tooth -- these are all the telltale signs. Erik traces them, like how a shark traces blood.

Erik walks through the streets, towards his home. Zev is not inside.

It’s dark, but easy to trace the metal. Erik corners him in an alleyway, outside of old Jaffa.

The stone reminds him of the old city, the ancient walls in Jerusalem. He thinks of all the ancient people that walked through this alleyway, that touched these walls.

Erik’s fingers curl into a fist.

“I was wondering when you would come back,” Zev rumbles. He’s exited a bar several minutes ago, the smell of alcohol and smoke still clinging to him.

“Tell me,” Erik says. His fist tightens and Zev’s belt does the same, cinching his waist.

“In exchange for what?”

“Your life.” The belt tightens and Erik steps closer.

Zev snarls. “You don’t -- “

Erik’s face distorts with anger; he lunges forward and Zev’s hands fly to his neck as Erik wraps the belt around it.

“I’ll kill you with my bare hands,” Erik says lowly, his fingers tightening. “You know I will. Tell me where they’ve gone.”

Zev chokes out, “Airport -- two, two weeks ago -- ”

“Where to?”

Zev gurgles.

“Where to?” repeats Erik, insistent.

“B-Budapest,” Zev manages.

It’s too late, this Erik knows. It’s too late now to trace the trail --

(He could; he could get the exact date, track down a location.)

Erik kills him.

It’s been a while, maybe a few weeks, the fresh tang of blood fills the alley, cloying. Erik’s nostrils flare.

A familiar smell.

Erik returns back to his apartment, in the white Bauhaus building. The ocean murmurs behind him as he enters his flat. He washes his hands. They still feel unclean.


	2. two

The day after Erik kills Zev, he meets again with Charles, as he has been doing since they met a few weeks ago.

 “Come on in,” Charles invites Erik into his apartment without question. Erik wonders if Charles can feel his hesitation.

 “It’s cold outside,” Charles comments, when Erik barely manages a hello. Charles heads over to open up his window anyway, throwing open the curtains and glass, letting the noises of Tel Aviv filter in.

 Erik heads immediately to the mini-bar to grab a drink.

 Despite this, Charles hums appreciatively. He turns, to face Erik, and paces towards the vinyl stack. Apparently, he thinks better of it.

 Instead, Charles sits himself at his desk. Erik stands by the window, staring out over the city.

 From his vantage point, Erik can see the pale blue flowers and greenery curling around the building. Beyond that, the white beach stretches for some miles, along the ocean. City buildings, gray and white and brown, speckle the horizon.

 “The finer things in life,” Charles’ voice wafts towards Erik. He speaks contentedly. “No deadlines, no papers to grade.” Without turning around, Erik feels the weight of a fountain pen in Charles’ warm hand. His skin is soft.

 Charles begins a letter, presumably to his sister. His pen scratches against his paper.

 Erik turns around to watch.

 The nub of Charles’ pen presses against the paper, and ink wells up, pooling. Dark. It looks almost like blood, but Erik, of all people, knows the difference.

 The days begin to blur, quite easily.

 The next day, Charles returns the visit. He knocks on Erik’s door, once, twice, four times. Four quick knocks in succession.

 “Good morning,” Charles says brightly, when Erik pulls open the door to his flat.

 “Come in,” Erik says. His hair is still slightly damp from his morning shower, wet hairs curling at the back of his neck.

 “Breakfast?”

 “I ate,” Erik says. He forgets to sound apologetic.

 Charles doesn’t seem particularly disturbed. “Shall I pick something up from the market?”

 Erik grunts in a noncommittal way.

 Charles seems content to rummage around the apartment, opening the pantry. “Be back soon,” is all Charles offers before the front door opens and closes gently.

 Charles returns with a loaf of fresh bread and a bag of grapes.

 Erik opens a bottle of wine and Charles opens the balcony door.

 It feels like something out of a dream: drinking fine wine and eating fresh bread with sweet grapes, sitting on an idyllic balcony with Charles. It feels like the pause between breaths; Erik is waiting for the calm to shatter. Perhaps this is why the world has given him such nice things: because his mind will always stain them.

 That same night, they head to another bar. A popular bar, it’s filled with tourists and locals alike. The main bar is full of people and smoke and the heady smell of alcohol, mixing in a potent cocktail. Erik reaches out to grab Charles’ sleeve so they won’t be parted.

 They do get separated, if only for a minute or too. By the time Erik has reached the bar, Charles has slipped into another persona completely; he’s chatting up an English tourist smoking some reefer.

 Erik feels like he’s watching a movie go by, scenes from Charles’ life in Oxford, in loud bars like this.

 Charles claps Erik on the shoulder and he breaks out of his reverie. “What?”

 “I said, keep me steady, yeah?”

 Erik blinks. Nods. Of course. Erik claps his hand onto Charles’ knee. “Of course.”

 Charles takes the joint between his knuckles and inhales. He emanates this -- this hum of contentedness, so Erik brushes his thumb against Charles’ kneecap.

 They wind through the bar, and Erik follows Charles’ lead. It’s strange to meander like this, without direction.

 They end up in a back corner, lit only by soft yellow light. Something slow warbles on the radio and Erik feels as though he never wants to leave.

 Eventually they tire of the people and smoke, so they drag themselves out of the bar, onto the beach.

 The night is cold and clean, indifferent to them as they walk across the sand. Underneath the dark waves, Erik feels miles and miles of metal cable, stretching out beneath them. He tells Charles as such as he toes off his shoes and steps into the ocean.

 Erik can’t remember the last time he stood this calm in front of the sea. For a moment, he thinks of the first time he saw the ocean.

 “It’d be more impressive,” Charles slurs, “If you could understand every signal sent.”

 Erik looks over his shoulder. His lips quirk. “Not yet.”

 “Careful,” Erik warns, as Charles tugs off his jeans and shirt, pries off his shoes.

 “Oh, it’s just a dip,” Charles grins wolfishly. “Come on, then.”

 They really shouldn’t, because Charles is high and it’s rubbing off on Erik, but then Charles is stepping into the ocean. Erik follows, if only to save him from drowning himself.

 The water is thrillingly cold, tugging at Erik’s underwear. Underneath, his toes dig into thick sand.

 “What are you thinking of?” Charles asks eventually. He sounds surprisingly sober. When Erik turns to look at him, Charles is floating on his back, staring up at the sky.

 “I killed Shaw in a place like this.”

 Erik only hears the words after they leave his mouth.

 “If you had to do it over,” Charles says slowly, “Would you do it again?”

 “Yes,” Erik says. He tastes salt on his tongue.

 Charles’ guard must be down, because Erik suddenly feels a rush of nostalgia. For a minute, he hears, _by the sea, on sunny days, by the cliffs -- with Raven, miss those days_.

 Erik wants to ask what it was like, to grow up in a home like that. He can’t imagine.

 After a moment’s consideration, Erik asks.

 “It was a bit like this, really,” Charles says, “Days of basking in the sun. Like every day was vacation. But better, because there was no deadline, no end in sight.”

 Erik thinks that he can imagine.

 They swim back to shore after some time. Charles’ mouth is wet and red. When he bends over to pick up his discarded clothes, Erik wants to mouth at the knobs of his spine.

 Charles is so -- so easy, so tactile. Charles makes it so easy for Erik to want to touch him, to kiss him. Erik sits down on the wet sand, ignoring his own pile of clothes.

 Charles grumbles for a second with his jeans, before deciding that the battle between wet skin and denim is too much. Charles kicks off the few inches of his pants that he has put on and huffs, “Fuck it.” He flops back onto the sand.

 Quiet, save for the sound of the ocean and Charles’ breathing. Darkness.

 “I want,” Charles begins.

 Erik digs his fingers into the sand.

 “I want so many things,” Charles says.

 Erik stares up into the sky, unseeing.

 “Before, I wanted to graduate the top of my class. I wanted to be the best. I wanted everyone -- everyone to see me.” Charles turns onto his belly and looks back at the city. “I wanted to travel, but I also wanted to change the world. I wanted to know where I -- where we come from.”

 “And now?”

 “I’m not sure.” Charles smiles wryly. Erik can’t remember when he turned to look. “I think I want to know what I want. What I really want.”

 “What do you want?” Charles asks an indeterminable amount of time later. He turns to face Erik.

 “Before,” Erik looks back, “I wanted to kill Shaw. I wanted to kill all of them, all of those men.”

 “You’ve killed them.”

 “Not all of them.”

 Charles frowns. “Do you want to kill the rest of them? Are you going to?”

 Erik takes a while to respond. “Eventually.”

 The silence feels heavy.

 “Where,” Erik begins haltingly, “Where did you want to travel to?”

 Charles flops onto his back in response. His hand crawls across the wet sand to touch Erik’s shoulder. “Let me show you.”

 

* * *

 

 

When Charles first meets Erik, he thinks that Erik looks as handsome as Alain Delon, with his blue-green-gray eyes and sharp jaw.

 It’s especially true in this moment, he thinks, as they sit in the sunlight, on the front of a small motor yacht, sailing smoothly. Charles is thinking of _Plein Soleil_.

 The ocean parts with a whisper in front of them as Erik steers them through. It’s hard to tell which thoughts in Erik’s head belong to himself, and which ones belong to Charles.

 Beyond the metal railings of their motor boat, the ocean stretches out in an unreal expanse of blue. From here, Erik can see white cliffs and even whiter beaches.

 Erik asks, “Turkey?”

 Charles peers at him over the rim of his sunglasses. “Close. Greece.”

 “You’ve never been?”

 Charles stretches out languidly, crossing his legs, the material of his shorts pulling tight across his thighs, placing his arms over his hand so that his shirt lifts, revealing pale skin.

 “Never.” The wind ruffles Charles’ brown hair, and salt lifts up from the Aegean sea; Erik can taste the brine. He looks again towards the cliffs, towards what he knows now is Greece: most likely Santorini. “Perhaps we can take a quick tour of Turkey as well.”

 Erik feels a faint smile tug at his lips. He turns away to face the wind.

 For all his easy charm and small talk, Charles has no other people in this world in his mind. The sea is smooth and they reach port to be welcomed by only the wind, and a few birds.

 The white torpor of Santorini is broken only by bright blue roofs and an occasional stray cat. Underfoot, the stone steps and stone streets wind through the empty city. Erik doesn’t say anything;  he doesn’t need to.

 “I imagine,” Charles finally breaks the silence what feels like an eternity later, “That one day I’ll find others. More like us.” He tucks his hands into his pockets. They’ve been walking so long, Erik’s cheeks are warm from the sun. “I’ve kept half a mind out, whenever I travel. But I think I might -- I might seek us out.”

 “Mutants,” Erik offers.

 “Products of biological coincidence.”

 “Less coincidence and more circumstance, I think.”

 Charles tilts his head questioningly.

 “A biological coincidence,” Erik explains, “That is what separates us from humans. When you put it that way, it seems as though we are different by chance.”

 “Is it not? The random separation and consequent conjoining of DNA, a simple accident in DNA replication in somatic cells.” Charles shrugs. “A chance. A coincidence.”

 “There are no accidents. Mutation leads to evolution, Charles. Life did not start by accident.”

 “Miller and Urey.”

 “Beg your pardon?”

 “Stanley Miller and Harold Urey -- they were scientists who conducted an experiment, about eight years ago. They simulated Earth’s early atmosphere, a primordial soup, if you will, and ran an electric current through the inorganic pool, to simulate lightning. They found organic materials -- amino acids -- in that pool, made entirely of raw inorganic materials. Life in fact was started by chance -- a miraculous stroke of lightning, a perfect storm.”

 Erik shifts. “Amino acids aren’t living organisms, Charles.”

 “The abiotic synthesis of amino acids leads to the joining of these small molecules, which leads to macromolecules. Macromolecules package into protobionts, and so on, until self-replicating molecules originate.”

 “Quite a leap, from amino acids to cells.”

 “As it happens, Erik, yes. Luck, chance that we are here at all, assembled from amino acids, from lightning and carbon and metal. And baser yet, from dust and from earth.”

 “Luck? Luck that that perfect storm happened upon a perfect brew of primordial soup? Coincidence that this happened on a planet that was just the right distance from a star, with just the amount of water and earth and air?” Erik shakes his head. “I’m no man of science, like you, but chance and coincidence didn’t bring us here.”

 “Then what did?”

 Erik shrugs. “Whatever it is, we can’t be here by coincidence. Too much left to chance. From earth to macromolecules to mutants, we’ve evolved. With purpose. With design.”

 Charles frowns. “For what purpose, what design?”

 “To be better. To become better. But no one wants to be bested, Charles, so they’ll fight. You know they will.”

 And so they return to a familiar argument. Erik doesn’t know which of them thinks that -- maybe both of them do -- but Charles decides to turn away for the moment, unwilling to be drawn into another long debate.

 “I’m famished,” Charles says instead, turning around a corner. Bright purple bougainvillea climb over whitewashed walls, spilling onto the white stone streets. “Shall we get lunch?”

 Charles leads them down the narrow street and suddenly they happen upon an empty cafe, with food piled on a table for two.

 “Convenient,” Erik says. Charles grins, small and boyish.

 A salad of cucumbers, onions, olives, and feta cheese; moussaka, a fragrant eggplant casserole of sorts; Mediterranean sea bass and black tiger shrimp; and lamb gyros with tzatziki sauce -- all of this is loaded on their table.

 Charles procures a bottle of bubbly, literally from out of nowhere, and pours into two champagne glasses. Beyond the cafe, the roofs of many houses in Santorini are perfectly blue -- just like in the pictures. The sky as well is a deep Cerulean, along with what they can see of the ocean.

 Time passes languidly.

 The sun begins to set by the time they’ve worked their way through about half of the champagne. Erik pulls out a pack of cigarettes and Charles a lighter. The horizon fades to purple and pink and orange. Warm candlelight illuminates the city streets.

 “We’re drawn to the sea, you and I,” Charles notes a while later.

 “Salt,” Erik agrees, “It heals many wounds.”

 Charles hums. “The ocean. It heals, erases, destroys.”

 Erik sips at his drink. It tastes like how champagne ought to taste, feels as champagne ought to feel. “You could get lost here.”

 “I agree. I try not to wander too far in my mind. So as not to get lost.”

 Charles suck on his cigarette. Exhales. “I’ve never been this immersed before,” he adds as an afterthought. “Too dangerous.”

 “Too appealing. You could get lost,” Erik says again.

 “That’s why you’re here.”

 They linger for a little longer. Their cafe, perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean, offers them an ideal vantage point to watch the sunset.

 When the night creeps in, one by one the warm lights go out in the city. They are soon left in total darkness, save for the stars overhead. Erik and Charles tilt their heads back to look. When they look back to the earth again, Santorini is replaced with the dark beach in Israel. Tel Aviv, again.

 Erik turns across the wet sand to look at Charles, who smiles back at him. 

 They crawl back to Charles’ hotel room, because it is closer. Charles invites him in, then sprawls across the brown comforter. He waves a hand in invitation, which Erik takes: Erik leans against the foot of the bed, world still slightly blurry from his trip with Charles.

 He doesn’t remember sleeping, but he does remember his awakening: in the dark hotel room, white light leaking from underneath the curtains; Charles shaking him awake.

 “You were dreaming,” Charles says in explanation. He’s blinking the sleep out of his eyes; he’s missing a shirt and his hair is rumpled.

 That’s an understatement. Erik has had a nightmare: he can taste the blood in his mouth from where he bit his cheek, and the collar of his cotton shirt sticks to his neck in a ring of sweat.

 “I tried to enter your mind,” Charles says, retracting his leg from where he’d used his thigh to pin down Erik’s hips. Charles coughs and wipes his hair from his eyes. “Couldn’t.”

 Erik stares up at the ceiling. He can still feel the weight of Charles’ body. “My mind isn’t welcoming to visitors.”

 “Not when you’re asleep.”

 Before he can think better of it, Erik asks, “What was it like?”

 Charles doesn’t pretend not to understand. He perches on the edge of the bed, on the brown comforter. Erik sits up against the headboard.

 “Dark,” Charles says eventually. “To say the least.” He doesn’t move to open the curtains, or straighten the waterfall of sheets falling off the foot of the bed. “I saw Zev. I saw Shaw.” Charles’ lip twitches. “Or what was left of them.”

 “I told you. I warned you.”

 “Your past is formidable.” Charles yawns and picks his shirt up from the floor.

 “I’ve learned to live with it.”

 “And at what cost, my friend?”

 “There’s nothing I can do to change the past.”

 Charles turns back to look at Erik. “No one deserves to die.”

 “Everyone has to pay the price for their actions.”

 Charles frowns. “And you’ll be the judge of that?”

 “How is it fair,” Erik says, “That an innocent man, murdered, is buried while his murderer lives?”

 “Justice, my friend, will be paid. I assure you.”

 The sheets clench around Erik’s fist. “How can it be paid? How can they suffer what I’ve suffered unless they are dead? Unless they’ve been killed?”

 “And if they suffer? And if they pay the price?” Charles yanks his shirt on. “Is that vengeance for you or justice for them?”

 “Both.”

 “And after when will the justice be served? How much is enough, Erik?” Erik blinks; Charles continues. “It’ll never be enough.” Charles shakes his head. “After the war, hundreds of prisoners of war were sent to clean up. To dig up bombs, mines. Defuse them with their bare hands. They were punished for their fathers’ crimes. They were boys, Erik -- ”

 “There will always be those to pay the price.”

 “ -- boys drafted in at the end of the war because everyone else was dead. It wasn’t their crime. But they paid the price. Is that justice?”

 “Someone has to pay the price. They inherited their fathers’ crimes, they inherited the price to be paid.”

 “No one deserves to die. To suffer like that. Much less innocents.”

 “Debt doesn’t go away, Charles. Heritage goes both ways: do you think you’d be here, speaking to me now if it weren’t for the wealth you inherited? If you don’t think those boys deserved to die, then you shouldn’t have taken the old man’s money.”

 Charles shuts his mouth with a click. His lips are paper thin.

 Sunlight streams into the room when Charles rises and opens the curtains. He disappears into the restroom. Erik pulls on his clothes.

 

* * *

 

 

 Charles taps his smoke and brushes the ashes away.  “We don’t have to hide, Erik. But we don’t have to use violence, either.”

 “Do you think I want to hurt anyone?”

 Charles looks at Erik through the haze. His eyes are unbelievably blue.

 There’s a lump in Erik’s throat. A waiter approaches and Erik is momentarily distracted. He turns to take in the metal of the waiter’s rings, watch, and lighter. When Erik turns back around, Charles seems closer than he was before.

 “Do you?”

 Charles reaches out and Erik thinks he feels a touch on his wrist. He can’t be sure, because he’s still looking at Charles’ face. The waiter walks by and ignores them.

 “How long have you practiced that for?” Erik asks, frowning.

 Charles blinks. “What?”

 Erik thinks of pink and yellow triangles and black numbers tattooed on skin. He pulls his hand back.

 Charles clears his throat delicately and for a moment, Erik wants to explain. But Charles is high anyway, and none of this really matters. Charles is leaving soon, and, if nothing else, Erik knows that Charles is as stubborn as Erik is.

  

* * *

 

 

Another dream.

 A bus, rattling. Erik sticks out a hand. The automatic door lurches open. Lurches shut. Clattering, as coins fall. Erik follows Charles to the back of the bus.

 Inside, the window fogging up next to warm bodies. Outside, streetlight still like shards of butter on the wet street.

 A hand on Erik’s thigh. Erik looks away from the window. Two fingers on the placket of his suit trousers. A slow burning, low in his gut. Charles’ thumb flicks open the top button.

  _Let me_ , Charles doesn’t say, but Erik hears anyway.

  _I don’t_ , Erik begins. He aches.

 Charles’ thumb slipping underneath the material of Erik’s zipper. Slow. Soft.

 Erik wakes with a start. His left hand is curled into a fist and three nails have been ripped from the wall behind the bed’s headboard.

 His eyes adjust to the darkness.

 Down the hallway, in the living room, the metal of Charles’ watch is seductively warm. His pulse is steady; he’s still asleep.

 The nails bury themselves back into the wall and Erik lets his head fall onto his pillow. It’s still early.

 A few minutes pass. Erik thinks of nothing in particular, and his eyelids begin to slide shut when he vaguely registers a hitch in Charles’ breath.

 It’s some distance, between the bed and the couch, but Erik can easily hear in the quiet.

 Charles turns over, his sheets rasping noisily, and he huffs.

 A few seconds pass, then there’s another hitch. The sheets shift and the metal of the bedsprings sigh. Erik can feel sleep dragging him back under.

 It isn’t until Charles lets out a low groan that Erik realizes the dreams may not have been his own.

 The scent of salt wafts in through the open windows; the air is muggy and warm. Everything around Erik is damp and warm and salty, reminds him of sex.

 Erik turns, trying to find a more comfortable position, but he ends up rubbing his erection against his sheets accidently. Erik’s mouth, his muscles lax with sleep, slackens against his pillow.

 Charles’ breathing grows ragged. Erik hears the soft, rhythmic groaning -- _uh, uh, uh_ \-- and Erik relents, letting his hand slip down, under the waist of his underwear, to cup himself. He turns his face into the pillow.

 Erik comes like that -- half asleep, half listening to Charles’ moans and panting, fucking slowly into his own hand.

 

* * *

 

 

For someone so opposite of Erik, Charles is, impossibly, simultaneously aggravating and compulsive and magnetic. He is the definition of contradiction and arrogance.

 Here it is: Charles has been reading minds his whole life. He catches a stray thought and he thinks he understands an idea. He sees a memory and he thinks he knows a life.

 If only it were so simple.

 Charles has never known how to be wrong; this is one thing he did not learn at Oxford.

 Because while Charles talks about mutants and mutation and evolution, he wants complacency. He wants things to go well, he wants to avoid fights.

 In their bars and in their walks, Charles is easing their interactions so no one can see the way that Charles looks at Erik, at his wrist, at his throat, his mouth; so that no one can see the way Erik’s touch lingers on Charles’ elbow, his shoulder, his waist.

 And Erik doesn’t know if Charles is conscious of it. Charles eases the way so smoothly. He uses his powers like they have never been taken away from him. He uses his powers like he was born with them, like he feels comfortable with his mutation.

 They don’t talk about it.

 They argue. They argue about mutants and fitting in and being proud of who you are.

 But the one thing they have in common is their stubbornness. If nothing else, Erik knows that Charles is as stubborn as Erik is. And so, Erik waits.

 (But there’s something else. Charles wants. And Erik wants. And therein lies the rub.)

 

* * *

 

 

It seems as though Tel Aviv is drawing him in.

 “Erik! Erik!” Nona giggles with delight when Erik turns to give her his attention; he flicks a puff of flour in her direction.

 In the bakery, she helps Erik roll out dough, babbling in Hebrew all the while. They leave the dough to rise. Nona pulls cheese, pickled vegetables, and a slab of meat from the pantry to share.

 Erik feels like he’s hiding. He kneads the dough that Nona and her family will eat with his hands. He taints everything that he touches. Yet the satisfaction outweighs the guilt.

 Another night, Charles raps loudly on his door. They’d just finished lunch, a few hours before.

 “Come now, Erik, we’ve got somewhere to be,” is the explanation when Erik lets him in. Charles waves what appears to be two paper tickets. He’s wearing a cleanly pressed button-down and dress pants. “Put on your suit.”

 They walk to Heichal HaTarbut, an enormous concert hall in the heart of Habima Square. A banner announces that the Israel Philharmonic is playing tonight.

 “With Arthur Rubinstein,” Erik says. As a child, he remembers, vaguely, his family listening to Rubinstein. Charles must be listening in to Erik’s thoughts, because he smiles faintly.

 “You know,” Charles says quietly, as they are walking to find their seats, “Rubinstein’s piano teacher was Franz Liszt’s student. Liszt was taught by Czerny, who was -- ”

 “Taught by Beethoven,” Erik finishes. “A lineage.”

 “From talent to talent.”

 They sit and listen, rapt. A knot tightens in Erik’s throat.

 Erik learns more in Tel Aviv than he has in any other city. He learns from his conversations with Charles, from the texts that he’s finally now got the time to read, from the way he moves through the city and the way the people respond to him.

 Food, music, the finer things -- Tel Aviv, and perhaps Charles, offer these things, endlessly. It is as though the world knows he aches.

 In juxtaposition to this, Erik’s nightmares drift back: darkness, dark blood; the gray, paperish quality of malnourished skin.

 Erik wakes from one particularly vivid nightmare, screaming his throat dry. Charles is pinned underneath him, struggling, valiantly.

 Chest heaving, Erik pulls himself back, pulling his fingers away from Charles’ throat. “I’m -- I’m sorry,” Erik says. “Did I -- what did I -- ”

 Charles gulps for breath. “No,” he coughs out, “I should’ve known. I shouldn’t have tried to wake you.”

 Erik rolls off his bed and scoops up his shorts. He slips on his shorts and pads over to the window, opens the glass to let the sweat and confusion and anger bleed out of the room, into the salty air. “If you can’t tell me, then show me.”

 “Why do you want to know?”

 Erik wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I always want to know.”

 “Know what your hands have done?”

 “You know, as well,” Erik says.

 Charles grunts in agreement. “Tried to wake you,” he waves his hand in an all-encompassing manner, taking in the soiled sheets and strewn pillows. “You grabbed me and I tried to fight.” He grimaces. “A mistake.”

 Erik’s nostrils flare. “Whose blood?”

 Charles pushes the sheets down. He gestures to his ribcage. The welling of blood underneath his last rib matches the blood underneath three of Erik’s nails. After a few long moments, Erik says, “Come here. I’ll help you clean.”

 Erik draws a bath, because he knows that Charles likes his spacious bathtub. Erik likes it as well.

 He fills the tub and drops in a few particularly magnetic stones. The water begins to warm and Erik opens the door with his foot.

 Charles is on the bed, with gauze and antiseptic, as instructed. “Shall we?” Charles says, examining his wound clinically. He sounds as though he’s about to begin surgery.

 Erik cleans the wound methodically. It isn’t shallow, but it isn’t deep. “It’ll heal,” Erik says as he works. It’s a little strange to be doing this on another body.

 As if he’s reading Erik’s thoughts, Charles asks, “How many times have you done this?”

 “To myself?” Erik’s thumb brushes against the unblemished skin of Charles’ ribcage, half on accident. “More times than I can count.”

 “And to others?”

 Erik’s lip quirks. “Why do you ask questions that you already know the answer to?”

 Charles smiles a little.

 Erik nods towards the open door leading to the bathroom. “Bath’s ready for you.”

 Charles goes willingly, the white sunlight from the bathroom consuming him. After throwing away the dirty gauze, Erik follows.

 “Were you ever lonely?” Charles slips into the tub. Sunlight dapples the white tile floor, in contrast to the red cloth that Erik takes from Charles.

 After some consideration, Erik answers. “No.”

 “How long?”

 Erik turns away, towards the sink. “Almost ten years.”

 Charles continues anyway. “Ten years is a long time.”

 Erik flicks his fingers and the faucet squeaks open. Blood runs down porcelain as Erik wrings out the cloth.

 “You kept a routine,” Charles says. “Programmed yourself. Like clockwork.”

 Erik cleans out the cloth and turns back to give it to Charles.

 “I still am,” Erik says.

 Charles takes the cloth and holds it over his wound. He closes his eyes. Erik gets a thought, an image: _slumber, slow, soft; a calm. Broken by the open and closing of a door. 5AM_.

 “Every day,” Charles says, “Like clockwork. A run in the morning. Exercise.”

 Erik lights a cigarette and leans against the white walls of the bathroom. 

 Charles cracks open an eye. “Got a cig you can spare?”

 Wordlessly, Erik pushes himself off the wall and hands Charles the cigarette in his hand.

 “You’re not wrong,” Erik says after a while. It takes a not inconsiderable amount of effort to keep emotion from his voice.

 Charles tilts his head back, obviously enjoying his cigarette. He closes his eyes again. The ends of his hair are damp.

 “And you?”

 “Was I lonely?” Charles huffs. “All too often.”

 Erik leans back against the wall. “You had your sister.”

 Charles hesitates. “I had to be strong for her. I was -- I am her guardian.”

 “Is she like you?”

 “No,” Charles says with a wry smile, “She’s bold. Irrational. Impulsive. But she has a kind heart. She acts on emotion.”

 Erik wishes he had someone so that Charles could ask about his family in kind.

 “Milgram,” Charles says a little later. “Stanley Milgram. Conducted an experiment at Yale a few years ago. Heard of it?”

 Charles probably knows that Erik has not. Erik shakes his head no anyway, then remembers. “No,” he says.

 “An experiment on obedience to authority. If memory serves correctly, he gave test subjects control of monitored electric shocks. Of course, the shocks weren’t really implemented, but the subjects thought they were really sending these shocks through another person -- a student.

 “An experimenter was in the room. The test subjects were supposed to teach students. For every missed word, the experimenter told the test subject to administer a shock. Voltage increased each time.” Charles grimaces. “Even with screams played back, most test subjects obeyed the experimenter. Believed they weren’t doing harm, even though if the voltage really was sent through, the student would’ve died.”

 “Following orders,” Erik says, darkly.

 “Conformity.” Charles sucks on his cigarette. “They were susceptible. They just followed authorities; it wasn’t really them.”

 “It doesn’t matter. There still will be a reckoning. There still will be blood that needs to be shed.”

 “Blood, pain, violence. My friend, you’ve become immune. You’ve become desensitized.”

 “In what way?”

 “Do you remember what it’s like to feel pain?”

 Erik’s nostrils flare. “I of all people know.”

 “Then you remember how it hurts.” Charles opens his eyes and stares up at the ceiling. “How can you knowingly inflict that same pain?”

 Erik doesn’t answer. Instead he says, “Eichmann. That was the man, the Nazi who engendered your Milgram’s experiment.”

 “So you have heard of it before.”

 "I remember now. Eichmann was hanged here, only a few years ago. In Israel.”

 “Justice served?”

 Erik pushes himself off the wall and opens the bathroom door. “One day, Charles, someone will take something from you and you’ll understand.”

 Charles opens his mouth to speak but thinks better of it. The bathroom door closes.

 Later, they head out in search of drinks. It’s late, loud and busy and crowded; Erik would rather head back to the hotel but he allows Charles to drag him along.

 As they walk across the open space when many bodies sway to music, Charles asks, carelessly, over his shoulder: “Care for a dance?”

 Erik scoffs. As if Charles wouldn’t block them out from the rest of the patrons, as if he wouldn’t hide them, as if he weren’t afraid.

 In the midst of the bar, they’re interrupted mid-conversation by an American woman. “Excuse me,” she says, her hand touching the edge of Erik’s sleeve. He resists the urge to pull away. “Sorry to interrupt, but I couldn’t help hear you speaking English. I was wondering, if you could help me?”

 Erik looks up at Charles, expecting him to answer. But Charles is taking a long swing from his drink, already motioning someone over for another.

 “That’s a lira,” Erik says. Some patrons behind her jostle her, and she steps a little closer to Erik, her hand soft and small and warm. “Yes, that one. An Israel pound.”

 She asks a few more questions about currency and Erik answers them, polite as can be.

 “Thank you,” she says eventually, smiling at him. It’s as though she can’t even see Charles. Erik wonders if she can. For a brief second, Erik entertains the thought of sleeping with her, pulling her close and fucking her fast and hard. She leaves. 

 Charles interrupts Erik's thoughts. “I think she was interested.”

 “It starts with identification,” Erik turns away from all thoughts of sex, continuing their conversation. “It ends up with being rounded up, experimented on, eliminated.”

 “She was pretty,” Charles says.

Erik downs the rest of his glass. “They’ll never be able to cooperate. If a new species is being discovered, it should be by its own kind, no one else. Are we finished?”

 “I think I’ll stay a little while longer.”

 Erik’s pushing his way out of the bar when he feels the metal of Charles’ watch wandering back towards the woman.

 (“I could make you leave. I could make you stay.” A memory comes floating back to Erik. A conversation from long ago. “You wouldn’t even know,” Charles says. “I could, but I won’t.”)


	3. three

When Charles talked about the sublime, he spoke of nature. He spoke of the Himalayas, the Aegean, the Rub’ al Khali, their stars, the galaxy. He spoke of these things, these places, their beauty and their history and their grandeur.

But there is something else. Here, for Erik, is the sublime in all things small:

The lilt in Charles’ voice as he rambles on about genetics; the perfect taste of a nectarine after it is freshly picked, soft sweetness not unlike that of a mouth; the slip of the buttery material of a leather jacket over skin; the faint imprint of Charles’ touch on Erik’s wrists, his arms, his elbow as the other man moves to catch Erik’s attention.

(There’s no need, for Charles draws Erik’s attention like how blood draws sharks.)

A while ago Charles had said that they didn’t know how to describe the color blue. If Charles asked him again, what the color blue is, this is what Erik would describe:

A familiar bar. The smell of cigarettes and alcohol and heady sex. Perhaps jazz, in the background. Ellington or Coltrane. Maybe both. A night of drinking. A night of smoking. A walk down to the ocean. The ocean water salty, Charles’ mouth sweet. A familiar taste.

 

* * *

 

 

Another day: Erik, pliant with scotch in his gut; Charles, pliant from the reefer in his lungs. 

“Care for a hit?” Charles asks, his joint caught between two fingers. They’re both sitting on metal chairs on the balcony. Just one day, like many others.

“Not particularly,” Erik answers truthfully.

“But you’ve never before,” Charles folds his legs back in and crosses the balcony, somewhat sluggishly. The golden hour watches them serenely.

Charles stops only in front of Erik’s chair. “Just one puff.”

In response, Erik raises an eyebrow. “I’ll hit it for you,” Charles says, magnanimously.

His fingers curl artfully around the rolling paper. Erik thinks of the men he saw during the war, clutching desperately at their cigars. Charles holds his joint as though it weighs nothing at all. The coin in Erik’s pocket shudders.

Lost in thought, Erik stares blankly, unseeing as Charles sucks in. “What,” he begins, but Charles leans in and the rest of Erik’s sentence catches in his throat.

Charles presses two fingers against Erik’s cheek; his fingers are dry.

Erik parts his lips automatically, and the smoke transfers easily from where their mouths are slotted together. Erik tastes the pungent smoke.

“There,” Charles says as he pulls away, “That wasn’t too bad, wasn’t it?”

Erik exhales a pillar of smoke over the balcony’s railing. “You’re higher than a kite, Charles,” he says. He watches the smoke. He thinks of all the people who’ve returned to ash so he won’t think of Charles’ skin.

“Where will you go,” Charles asks, “To find the rest of the men you seek?”

“Hungary. Budapest.”

“And after? After they’ve all been killed?”

Erik bites back his immediate scathing response. Instead, he considers, then says, “I suppose. I want to make sure no one endures what I did.”

Charles finishes the last of his joint.

“And you?”

“Before,” Charles says, “I thought I’d return home to Raven. Continue my studies. Research.”

“But?”

“But,” Charles hesitates, “I think I told you this: I wanted -- I want to find others. And what you said -- ” He trails off.

“What did I say?”

“If a new species is being discovered, it should be by its own kind.”

They’re both quiet for a while.

 

* * *

 

Before, Erik was a machine.

A thing, a tool to be used, a weapon to fire.

After, Erik wants to strip himself down, dig his nails into flesh and show Charles red as if to say, see? Blood and bone and flesh -- not gears, not machinery.

But that is dark, and while Erik has seen enough bleeding to last him for a thousand lifetimes, Charles has not.

Yet, for someone so different than Erik, Charles reads him so well, so easily. Erik traces the edge of Nona’s ribbon with his forefinger and thumb; Charles tilts his head and smiles. Erik delicately places the touch of a needle against a vinyl; Charles hums in appreciation. Erik’s eyes snag on the curl of Charles’ lips; and Charles taps two fingers onto Erik’s wrist, leans in a little closer.

Erik doesn’t notice at first. It comes to him bit by bit, like the last vestiges of a dream, filtering through his mind.

When they are out, at the beach, in bars, in shops, no one really looks at them.

At first, before, Erik knows that Tel Aviv is a large city, full of bustling tourists. But then, after, unless they’re in a conversation, no one really _looks_ at them; their eyes are glassy, slide over him and Charles without recognition. Like a bubble sliding away in oil. Like a hand slipping over soaped skin.

And then he realizes.

Charles, for all his flirting and incorrigibility, doesn't care that he likes other men; he’s reconciled that fact fine. But he can’t stomach conflict, doesn't like those looks, the stray thoughts. Erik welcomes them.

Erik thinks that he ought to say something. Every time he does, it’s as though Charles anticipates the fight.

(How strange that Charles will welcome any debate over the merits of Aristotle versus Plato, of fine wine versus ale, of Brahms versus Mendelssohn; but he will shy away from any mention of the two of them, what they _are._ )

Or perhaps it’s because Erik doesn’t push hard enough.

(Charles offers him another drink, another cigarette. A bar patron stumbles upon their conversation to say hello. Erik wonders if the thought, the fight, slips away from his grip on purpose. If Charles let it go, like a bubble sliding away in oil.

Charles smiles.)

They are two sides of the same coin. Charles won’t relent. Neither will Erik.

The thing is, being a telepath means that you can read others like a book, so quickly, so easily. Of course.

But at the same time, what a terrible, terrible gift Charles has: to be able to see bits and pieces but not to know.

How can the images of a mind, how can the surface thoughts really convey a lifetime of experiences? How can you reconcile between experiencing self and remembering self?

Charles sees the pink triangle in Erik’s mind and assumes that Erik is afraid.

Erik thinks of the pink triangle and the yellow triangle and the horrors he endured and wishes that it all were to be stamped on his skin, so that the rest of the world may see him for who he is. He does not wish to hide.

Because: Charles has been reading minds his whole life. He is used to believing that what he sees is the pure and simple truth.

If only it were so simple.

 

* * *

 

 

They don’t stay quiet for long. Charles brings it up a little later. 

“We have it in us to be the better men, Erik,” he says. He’s pacing in his hotel room. Anxious. Like he’s a man waiting for misfortune. These past few days he’s been deliberate and emboldened and arrogant. Erik can’t imagine what he was like at Oxford.

Erik flicks his cigarette butt out of his fingers. “We already are. We’re the next stage of human evolution, you said so yourself.”

“No -- ”

“Are you really so naive as to think that they won’t battle their own extinction?” Erik stands. “Or is it arrogance?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’ve been provoking me, Charles.”

(I could read your mind, but I won’t. But I could.)

“So?”

“Didn’t you ever learn not to play with fire?”

(Charles, a while ago, not even pretending he wasn’t listening in on Erik’s thoughts.)

“You think too highly of yourself, my friend.”

“And you?” Erik moves closer. He clenches his empty fists. “You don’t? You think that they won’t fight back?”

“You think us so superior -- ”

Erik laughs without humor. “You can’t even go a day without your powers, Charles.” He moves closer. “You’re powerless.”

(Erik knew Charles for less than 24 hours and he already knew this: Charles wields his mutation like a man who has never had his power or his pride stripped away from him.)

“What will you do about it?” Charles bites out.

Something -- Erik doesn’t know what, doesn’t know if it’s his thought -- sparks in Erik’s thoughts and his muscles tighten: he lunges forward and pushes Charles into the mattress.

The stack of vinyl records clatters to the floor when Charles tries to run. “You see?” Erik drags his metal belt, “You see how you fight?”

They wrestle onto the bed and Charles’ face is open like it is when they’re debating hotly or clinking beer bottles. Erik doesn’t want to hurt Charles; would never want to hurt Charles --

But Charles is pulsing energy and he wouldn’t -- he would never let Erik hurt him.

“You give up?” Erik rasps.

“Never.”

Charles would never --

Charles is soft and pliant underneath Erik; his breath comes quick and his skin is soft. Warm.

It feels -- easy to reach up and grab Charles’ hands, push them against the metal headboard and hold them close. “Oh Christ,” Charles breathes out and Erik’s planted himself on Charles’ waist. Both of them breathe heavily.

“Huh?” Erik breathes against Charles’ ear, turns until he’s sure Charles can feel his stubble rasping against his cheek, his chin. “How about now?”

Charles’ length presses against Erik’s hip. “God,” Charles says, “Erik let me up, I -- ”

And absurdity of this situation -- Erik doesn’t know what to do, so he laughs. The metal sighs and shudders before slipping off of Charles’ skin.

For the first time in a long time, an unexpected emotion surfaces: anger.

Erik reaches out and tugs Charles close. “Is that all you’ve got, Xavier?” He presses his palm against Charles’ crotch, splays his fingers wide so the width of his hand can’t be mistaken for any woman’s. Erik wants to remind Charles.

A slight telepathic tug is all it takes for Charles to manipulate Erik’s powers until they’re tangled back on the bed. Erik can’t remember the last time he knew the name of the person he fell into bed with.

Erik falls onto the sheets first, back hitting the mattress with a soft noise, until he drags Charles down by his collar. The curtains are still drawn and all of the heat and anger is trapped in this room, in their room, boiling hot.

Before Erik can fully register the feel of Charles writhing on him, rolling his hips down (good, it feels so fucking good), Charles is tugging at Erik’s belt, pulling at the zipper. Slightly overwhelmed, Erik doesn’t register this for a few seconds; when he does, he aids the way with his powers. Charles pulls out Erik’s cock but leaves the trousers on.

Then Charles pushes down his pants, his underwear, hasty. Erik wants -- he wonders -- 

Charles’ skin is so so smooth, unblemished save for two matching scars on his knees. Erik does not touch. He watches as Charles grabs Erik’s soft cock, pulling roughly. Charles’ face is tight and he doesn’t look up.

“Take your shirt off,” Erik says.

More skin. Clean skin.

Erik’s eyes still rove across Charles’ stomach, the expanse of his ribcage when Charles jerks Erik’s cock again, pulling it in between his thighs.

Erik yanks on Charles’ hair until Charles looks down to meet his gaze. Charles scoots forward and presses his mouth against Erik’s temple, before pushing the head of Erik’s cock in him. It slips the first time and Erik bites back a groan, fighting the urge to roll his hips up.

Finally the head slips in and Erik’s hands grip Charles’ warm hips as he rocks himself up and down. Erik’s gaze keeps snagging on Charles’ throat, the pillar of his neck, the swell of his ribs; he almost forgets to snap his hips up.

The curve of Charles’ lips press against Erik’s forehead. Erik can almost believe it’s deliberate. “Charles.”

His orgasm is dragged out of him with a stutter and a groan; Charles comes soon after, hot on his chest.

Charles collapses onto the bed with a huff. Their knees knock and Charles’ elbow presses into Erik’s ribs.

Charles’ mind reaches out and feels like a thick blanket. They both fall asleep within minutes.

The next morning, to no one’s surprise, Erik wakes early.

Sunlight slants through the crack in the curtains, onto the bed. Charles is still asleep. Erik watches him for a moment, considering. Even unconscious, Erik wonders how much telepathic power Charles exudes. Later, Erik will look back on this moment and wonder if Charles pushed him.

Erik’s clothes are wrinkly and crusty. Erik pulls on his jacket. Heads back to his flat.

He’s reading when the door rattles with a knock. Erik waves the door open with his hand from where he sits on the couch. There’s a chessboard sitting on the coffee table.

“Care for a game?”

Charles settles down on the floor by the chess. Erik thinks that he should say something, then thinks that Charles might already know that he’s thinking that. He reaches out to grab a pack of cigarettes.

They play in silence, until Erik captures Charles’ rook.

“Checkmate,” Erik says.

“Cheater,” Charles says.

 _Childish_ , Erik thinks.

Charles laughs.

 

* * *

 

 

A dream again. A cab hailed, this time.

Faceless, nameless driver. Engine purrs, wheels turn. Driving on and on and on. 

Partition sliding shut. Black curtain. Finale.

Erik turns.

Charles, beside him. Metal thrums around them: the car’s skeleton, Erik’s watch, the iron in Charles’ blood. Leather seat warm underneath their thighs.

_Cigarette?_

Smoke, from Charles’ mouth. Smoke, curling into the cab. Smoke, in Erik’s mouth.

Charles’ legs fall open in invitation.

Again, familiar --

 

* * *

 

 

A familiar taste rests on Erik’s tongue when he wakes. The last dregs of his dream still linger. 

He wakes and cleans and is soon joined by Charles. Erik pushes back his thin curtains and sunlight streams in, over their game of chess.

Despite the soft breeze lifting his gossamer curtains and the warm white sunlight, there’s a current running through the room, of lust of anger of fear. Erik can’t help but push forward and kiss Charles.

The faint taste of coffee hits Erik’s tongue when Charles opens into the kiss. Charles is so very soft gentle _careful_ when he kisses.

The hard lip of the coffee table digs into their waists as they lean over. “Wait, let me,” Charles breathes, and then he steps on the coffee table and Erik grabs him by the waist, dropping them onto the couch.

Light spills onto the marble-skin of Charles’ throat and he looks like an oil painting. Erik pushes Charles’ knees to make room for his hips between Charles’ legs.

_Is this how it is?_

“What?” he rasps, reluctantly breaking away from Charles’ mouth.

“Is this how it is?” Charles pants again. He reaches up and puts a hand against Erik’s chest.

“You fuck me, then we don’t talk about it again?”

While Charles is hiding there are men and woman and mutants out in the world being outcasted for who they are, because they cannot hide, are not afraid to hide.

“Are you going to lie there and take it?” Erik snaps. Charles bursts out with an incredulous laugh. He pushes Erik off easily, padding into the kitchen.

Erik clenches his jaw because he doesn’t trust himself to speak.

Charles is the definition of contradiction, of arrogance: he prefers his sister to hide in pale pink skin while he flaunts his mutation, pushing aside strangers left and right with a brush of his temple. He wields his power carelessly, like a child, and then urges mutants to lie low, to wait.

And yet.

Erik still wants to touch him so badly. Instead, Erik reaches into his pocket and squeezes the coin there. Erik pulls it out, looks at the coin. He wonders how that is him, how that boy in his memories was him, is him. Is it still him? Or has he become undone entirely? Is he a new man? How can this same body still be his?

Several minutes pass. Erik straightens up and heads to the balcony. Metal groans and warps under his hands as he grips the railing, leaning over the city.

Charles eventually joins him.

“Cigarette?” he offers Erik. His expression is unreadable.

Erik takes it and Charles lights it for him. They sit on the balcony, lost in their own thoughts, for a while, until Charles takes his leave.

 

* * *

 

 

Smoke curling in the air. Cheap cigars, dusty ashtrays. A familiar bar.

“You know what I miss?” Charles asks. The bartender is wiping a glass in the corner. The place is subdued. Quiet.

Erik swirls his drink before taking a sip.

“Tea,” slurs Charles. “Good, English tea. What I wouldn’t do for a strong cup of Yorkshire.” Charles shakes his head.

Erik wonders: if Charles had a physical mutation, like his sister, how often would he use his powers so carelessly? So without worry?

Erik finishes the last of his drink. He doesn’t trust himself to speak.

A few bills on the table. Door swings open. Outside, streetlamps flicker. Streetlight looks like butter on the wet streets. Stale cold dusk, the pitter patter of rain and footfalls. Behind him, Charles.

They part ways at the boardwalk. Walk to their respective homes. Sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

For all the influence he exerts with his powers, Charles’ telepathy is a limb with which he grew up. This Erik knows.

Erik also knows that despite Charles’ arrogance and his hypocrisy, Erik is still impossibly drawn to him. Perhaps, if they had more time, Erik would try to explain the different between the experiencing self and the remembering self, would try to explain that there are some things that even memories cannot explain.

But Erik never was very good with words.

Today, they’re in Erik’s flat, but Charles has brought his record player. John Coltrane warbles in the air.

“Really,” Charles is saying, “It’s amazing. Each record is packed with -- with history and culture.” He’s flipping through his stack of records with one hand: Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Coltrane, Ellington, Chet Baker. His other hand holds a warm bottle of beer. “The Romantics, the Harlem Renaissance, the Beat Generation -- all revolutionaries.”

Erik sucks on his cigarette. “And the Haitian Revolution? The American, the French revolution?”

“What about them?”

“They were violent uprisings, the push of the people against an oppressive regime.”

“They were a fight for freedom, not a fight for destruction.” Charles puts down the records and leans back on the couch. “To completely destroy another nation, another species, should never be a goal.”

“And if that’s the only answer?”

Charles grimaces. “It isn’t, my friend.”

Erik licks his lips. He raises his own beer bottle. “To revolution.” He’s surprised to find that he means it.

They talk a little longer, about musicians and revolution and history. They finish their respective beers and then some more. By the time the sun sets, they’re both warm and drowsy with alcohol.

Not trusting himself, Erik turns in early. He shrugs off his shirt and simply falls on his bed, without bothering to crawl underneath the sheets. It’s far too warm for that: the smell of summer and alcohol and smoke hangs heavy and hot in the air.

Erik wakes slowly, the taste of his dream lingering on his tongue. Erik is so unused to having another body in his bed that he doesn’t register Charles’ until the other man breathes warm air onto the back of Erik’s neck.

Charles’ hips are rolling against Erik’s back, one arm thrown over Erik’s body, knees tucked up behind Erik’s. Erik groans and rolls over.

He doesn’t ask what brought this on; neither of them says anything but Erik can feel the warm hum of arousal and contentment from Charles’ mind. Charles opens hungrily into their kiss, tastes of alcohol and the sweet jam they bought today at the market. Charles digs his fingers into Erik’s hair to pull him close. Erik thinks their mouths can never meet for long enough.

The windows are still open, letting in thick stripes of moonlight and a warm night breeze. Under Erik’s tongue, Charles’ skin is perfectly warm and damp and salty. Erik touches him as gently as he can.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s the end of August when Charles wakes early one morning, rapping on Erik’s door.

“Hello,” Charles says. He’s wearing a gray cardigan today, in deference to the cooler weather coming in.

“Hello,” Erik says. After a moment’s hesitation, he swings the door open, wider. “Come in.”

They don’t stay for long in the flat, only long enough to grab some cigarettes and some change, before heading down to the promenade.

“Here?” Charles asks, stopping in front of a cafe.

Erik nods curtly. “Good a place as any."

“That’s not true,” Charles smiles faintly, “And you know it. You have your indulgences, and quality food is one of them.”

They wander in and find a small table in the back of the shop, shrouded with hanging plants and the smell of frying eggs. Erik orders for them both. Charles takes out a cigarette and raises his eyebrows at Erik. Erik leans in and lights it for him.

Smoke curls over their table.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Charles says.

Erik sips from his coffee. Eventually, he puts his thoughts to words. “The streets,” he says. “The dirt roads. In Jaffa. In Jerusalem. So many -- people, so much history has walked in these cities.” Erik brushes his cheek. “It’s hard to believe I’m just one of them.”

“Thank you,” Charles looks up and smiles when their food comes. It’s so easy for him. For a few minutes, conversation ceases as they eat. Erik peels a tangerine and relishes the sweet flesh.

Charles watches him, more intently than usual. “What,” Erik looks up and catches his gaze.

“Citrus,” Charles smiles. “You love citrus.”

Erik finishes his tangerine.

“You’re not just one of the people walking these streets,” Charles says after a pause. “You’re molding the streets, shaping them. There’s nowhere you go without leaving a trace.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Charles purses his lips, “Biologically speaking, everywhere you go, you leave traces of yourself, physically. Clouds of parts of your skin cells, like dust. And when you speak, your voice, the sound waves reverberate, over and over again.” He tears off a piece of fresh bread. “And, on another level, every person you talk to, every place you go, has an effect. Some big and some small.”

Erik drinks his coffee. “A Sound of Thunder,” he says, “By Ray Bradbury. Do you know it?”

“No,” Charles says. “Tell it to me.”

Erik starts slowly. “The future. 2055. Time travel has been invented.” Erik tells the story, haltingly. He tells the story of a man travelling to an ancient time, to the time of primordial soup and gigantic beasts. This man, terrified by the beasts he sees, accidentally steps off the path and crushes a butterfly underfoot. When he returns, English is no longer the same language and a fascist has been elected leader.

 “All things delicately interlinked,” Charles notes.

Erik nods in agreement then drains the rest of his coffee. They finish their breakfast. “I’m heading to the airport,” Charles says. “My flight takes off in an hour or so.”

“I’ll drive you.”

Despite this, they linger a little while longer. They both have that tendency.

Erik pays for their breakfast, denying Charles’ offer to. Then they walk back to Erik’s hotel to pick up the motorcycle. From there, Erik drives to Charles’ flat to pick up his small pack; they drive to the airport soon after.

Erik walks Charles to the entrance of the terminal. It’s early; there’s hardly anyone around.

“Here.” Erik reaches out and puts the coin into Charles’ hand. His touch is warm.

And then Charles reaches out, cupping his hand around Erik’s head, pulling him close to press his lips -- warm, clean skin -- against Erik’s temple.

Charles steps back, clearing his throat.

“Goodbye, my friend.”

Even though Charles’ face has become so familiar, Erik looks his fill. Finally, Erik says, “Goodbye, Charles.”


End file.
